That sounds like the "Tipping Point" popular culture swallowing up the old traditions in brave new world. The old world of private property and individual achievements is now so Non-Marxsonian. Just jump off America and he will catch you with a Communist Paradise where no one works and everyone gets a share of that work product, unless you are a part of the small cadre of Party insiders who now own everybody and everything and get it all.

With all due respect to the season, I would give better odds to another virgin birth than the possibilty that the democrats will not unilaterally, and against the desires of most Ameericans, pass the bill none of us have seen and none of them have read.

I am surprised that so many people want their lives touched by millions of people they don't know including politicians, and bureaucrats that could not care less about them. People that I'm sure most of them would not like if they knew them. But, by all means touch me, decide my fate, my parents' my children's. I trust you all.

The fighting over this system's details will keep us all busy for the next century. It's just a thrilling vision of fun.

Even worse, since the 1770s, Philadelphia has been known as the home of prominent revolutionaries.

Also, since the 1970s, Clearwater (Florida) has been world headquarters for the Scientologists.

Since the 1940s, Roswell, NM has been HQ central for those who conspire with illegal aliens who visit the earth to conduct experiments on human beings.

The whole planet is home for the most vicious group of all, the Terra-ists.

And, worst of all, I've got a sneaking suspicion that since the 1980s, the neighbors two floors above me and around the corner in the hallway have been leading some sort of sex cult in their apartment on alternating weekends.

"There are the three boxes of American freedom: the ballot box, the soap box, and the ammo box."

You forgot the cereal box, which frees mothers from having to prepare hot meals for their children; the wine box, which frees all of us from the hassle of breaking corks in the bottle by using corkscrews improperly; the lock box, which, had Al Gore not had his Presidency usurped by the right wing cabal on the Supreme Court, would have protected our Social Security funds against all danger; and the "Box 'o Lox," which frees some of us from having to make tough decisions what to give our pesky aunts for the holidays.

I wonder if our oh so sensitive president and his echo chamber democrats understand that 60-70% of us feel sick with churning stomachs while we watch in horror as Harry Reid and company are on the verge... the precipice of making our lives less free and our incomes a lot thinner?

"Actually there are four boxes. The one you forgot is 'jury,' and it comes between 'ballot' and 'ammo.'"

The jury box was a great bulwark of liberty for awhile, but it's irrelevant now; juries are expected to be rubber stamps for the state today, as they are instructed in the law by judges and are told they must find according to the stated law. The notion that juries might acquit someone on the basis that they feel a law is unjust, known as "jury nullification," is now perceived as, if not "quaint," certainly radical.

(One hears jurors sometimes bemoaning verdicts of "guilty" they rendered, despite their reluctance to do so, saying, "We had no choice." Actually, they do; no one can compel any juror to render a guilty verdict, no matter what the evidence or the law.)

At the ripe old of age of 68, just want you young 'uns under the age of 60 to know that you are truly f**cked: To paraphrase the soup nazi: Get in line and shut up; have your money ready; no social security for you, no medicare for you, and higher taxes for you. I am glad that hope, change, and transparency thing worked out so well for you.

"I wonder if our oh so sensitive president and his echo chamber democrats understand that 60-70% of us feel sick with churning stomachs while we watch in horror as Harry Reid and company are on the verge... the precipice of making our lives less free and our incomes a lot thinner?"

But they're doing it for a good cause! For Capitalism! For the Private Sector! For the for-profit insurance companies who will reap even more profits off the backs of the sick they they are able to realize now!

Let's hear it for the private, for-profit insurance companies! Hooray!

R. Cook wrote: The notion that juries might acquit someone on the basis that they feel a law is unjust, known as "jury nullification," is now perceived as, if not "quaint," certainly radical. (One hears jurors sometimes bemoaning verdicts of "guilty" they rendered....)

May we assume this to be your professional judgment based on a wide range of experience with juries?

"On the precipice-brink of a fatal question mark, the mind wonders how mathematics happen to contain so much commanding importance and so much incontestable truth, while comparison between mathematics and man only uncovers the latter's false pride and mendacity."

"May we assume this to be your professional judgment based on a wide range of experience with juries?"

I don't know how "wide" my experience is, and neither do I claim my judgment to be "professional," (whatever that might mean), but I've been a juror five times--two civil trials, two criminal trials, (the most recent earlier this year), and a grand juror. I was picked yet another time to serve on a civil trial, but the parties in dispute reached a settlement the night before we were to begin hearing testimony, and we were dismissed once we arrived and were seated in the jury box.

"Precipice" seems like an appropriate metaphor. Somewhere along the line the focus of the Democrat leadership seems to have shifted from passing legislation that addresses health care problems to passing legislation -- any sort of legislation.

We need -- make that the Democrats need -- to take a deep breath, step back, and ask themselves whether this legislation is good for the people of the United States. Since we are considering health care, they need to remember the Hippocratic oath, and its pledge to "do no harm."

"As of the second quarter of this year providers of health care plans, i.e., insurance companies, ranked 86th among US industries in profit margin."

All the more reason we must cheer the Democrats' capitulation to the edicts of the insurance lobby and the industry it represents! We must cheer their demands such that we use government power to further fatten and increasingly enrich those ravenous jackals--our insurers--so meager is their profit off over-priced private insurance policies that too many Americans are too poor (or, having been sick once or twice in their lives, are ineligible) to buy. They can only deny coverage to so many sick people with coverage they've paid for with years of premiums before it becomes uncomfortably obvious that the fix is in and the insured are the marks.

Let's hear it for more profits for the private, for-profit insurance industry! Hooray!

I don't know how "wide" my experience is, and neither do I claim my judgment to be "professional," (whatever that might mean), but I've been a juror five times

I do have some (very) limited professional experience with criminal juries other than serving on them, and I really do think that nullification is more common than you think, so jurors themselves don't describe it that way. It's was not at all uncommon in my experience for a perp (particularly of a misdemeanor) to walk because one or two jurors didn't think the police acted fairly or because the punishments would probably be too harsh (jurors may not be informed of the possible penalties, but enough of them know from experience). Often this played out along racial lines, but not always.

R Cook wrote: I've been a juror five times--two civil trials, two criminal trials, (the most recent earlier this year), and a grand juror. I was picked yet another time to serve on a civil trial ....

There does not seem to be anything in that experience that qualifies you to have implied (12:14) that jury nullification is used so rarely as to be perceived as "quaint" or "radical."

My career was as a trial lawyer and manager of trial lawyers in both civil and criminal cases. Jury nullification was not uncommon. Sometime it took the form of an acquittal, sometimes conviction of a lesser included offense, sometimes a finding of civil liability -- contrary to the evidence.

So, if this plan to re-organize medical care fails, as in, if fails to either substantially decrease the price of medical care or increase the quality of medical care in this country, will it be possible to "re-privatise" medicine?

It seems to me that in the past, government takeovers of an industry have been permanent. Even when they fail, there is seldom enough momentum to overcome the institutional inertia of an entrenched bureaucracy. So if this scheme fails to do what they advertise, do they have a plan for us to junk it?

Sofa King: What you say might be so, and to the extent it is, I'm happy to hear it. (Not that I am a champion of jurors letting offenders go free willy nilly. However, if juries refused to convict defendants charged with crimes such as possession or use of marijuana--to use merely an obvious example of the inequity and cruelty of state power--eventually such laws would be repealed, or prosecutors might not bother bringing unpopular charges against defendants if they knew they would lose at trial. The net result of such prosecutorial decisions would be as if the laws had been repealed.)

Nontheless, jurors are made to believe they don't have the prerogative to "void" the law, so to speak, by refusing to convict a person charged under what the jurors may feel to be an unjust law. It's in the state's interest, of course, to encourage this assumption in jurors of their relative powerlessness.

You're under a misapprehension; this bill will not serve to "un-privatize" medicine...it compels citizens to buy insurance from private insurers, who will profit mightily thereby. It is a boon to the private insurance industry.

What we need is complete "un-privatization"...the removal of the private insurers from the health care delivery system altogether.

And color me even more disillusioned when I read about all the unionized people working for the Red Cross. They went on strike and blocked blood deliveries to hospitals.

I'm fairly suspicious of populism, but more and more I avoid things that smack of "Too Big To Fail," and seek out businesses and organizations that are small and local--switching to a credit union, donating only to locally-based charities, etc. Otherwise, your money just gets funneled somewhere disgusting.

Robert Cook: I am not quite as convinced as you that compelling people to buy insurance is necessarily a boon to private insurers. Several things give me pause (not the least of which is the power to compel): First, if insurers cannot screen for risk, eg, preexisting conditions, they are more likely to incur much larger payouts; second, to compensate for this risk, they are likely to raise rates everyone to spread the risk pool; which, in turn leads to my third concern: the potential for crowding out in the event some form of government offered insurance is part of the health care bill.

You're under a misapprehension; this bill will not serve to "un-privatize" medicine...it compels citizens to buy insurance from private insurers, who will profit mightily thereby. It is a boon to the private insurance industry.

You are deluded. It isn't a boon to the insurance industry, it is a death knell.

As pointed out. Insurers will be FORCED to accept high risk/expensive/already sick people which will cost the companies more in pay outs of benefits WITHOUT being able to charge more for those high risk people.

The result is that premiums will go up dramatically to compensate for the increased benefits.

Low risk/healthy people will not buy insurance. Why should they when premiums have gone way way up and they can just wait until they are also sick to buy insurance? The fine will be less than premiums for many people.

The insurance companies are also not going to be allowed to offer intelligent policies that are high deductible/castrophic only coverage which would be less expensive.

Eventually, I give it about 5 years, the insurance companies will fold up business in the United States, move their business overseas and people will be left with no "private" options.

So a boon to the insurance companies. Hell no.

Once they are gone in the USA and we realize just how bad this is, the industry will never come back and we will be stuck with this terrible terrible plan.

I don't think that Robert Cook is really on the level with his rhetoric. Someone who clearly views his home country in the manner in which he does would have uprooted and moved elsewhere a long time ago if he were honest with himself.

I ride around a good bit on airplanes and am compelled on occasion to sit in the coach compartment where I am able to rub together with the great fat mass of humanity that we are going to have to take care of in the years ahead. No matter which direction this healthcare thing takes us we are freaking doomed unless and until people have to pay directly for their own medical care. These fat shits are going to ruin us all. Not to mention the crammed space in coach. Please please please quit eating. Please.

Since August the Dems have been making only a faint pretense of wanting a health care bill passed. As the unemployment grows, and then skyrockets from their real goal of an anti CO2 as pollution legally required shut down of American commerce, they then expect to have everyone who is uninsured and out of work on Medicaide anyway, and begging for something. Have Crisis, Will Travel says the Dems business card.

Big Mike:Somewhere along the line the focus of the Democrat leadership seems to have shifted from passing legislation that addresses health care problems to passing legislation -- any sort of legislation.

Not just any sort of legislation -- any sort of legislation that gives Democrats more power and more of our money.

"I don't think that Robert Cook is really on the level with his rhetoric. Someone who clearly views his home country in the manner in which he does would have uprooted and moved elsewhere a long time ago if he were honest with himself."

I do mean what I say. However, one always hopes to see a flicker of rationality among one's countrymen and women, and that, utilizing the instrumentalities of our Constitutional Republic, favorable changes might be made.

That said, I cannot say the idea of moving elsewhere has not begun to appear attractive to me. However, there are always impediments to simply up and leaving. If things continue in their present course, and if those impediments to relocating were to be resolved, then perhaps....

the lock box, which, had Al Gore not had his Presidency usurped by the right wing cabal on the Supreme Court, would have protected our Social Security funds against all danger

Honestly, Robert, all ideology aside, both yours and mine, how can you believe a thing this guy says anymore? Given subsequent Al Gore lineage since 2000, I see nothing to assure me that he would have followed through with that promise.

Robert Cook--I would only suggest that in fact most americans at least according to polls do NOT share your values--You are certainly free to express your values, but similarly, others are free to express theirs. and on this issue, you are in the minority--you still have the right to continue to express your views, but please don't attack those that dont share your values. That is what the political process is for

"...an achievement that will touch the lives of nearly every American."

Yea, and touch them in the most inappropriate ways...

Obama/Reid/Pelosi really are perverting our government, brazenly lying through their teeth about the costs and effects of this bill and doing any and every underhanded thing possible to get a piece of paper, that no one will have read, signed by Obama.

They care only about making more people almost completely dependent on, and controlled by, the government in order to create a 'permanent Democratic majority' - nothing more.

Can you imagine our government being *permanently* as totally fucked up as it is has been for the past ten months or so?

I do mean what I say. However, one always hopes to see a flicker of rationality among one's countrymen and women, and that, utilizing the instrumentalities of our Constitutional Republic, favorable changes might be made.

Well this may come as somewhat of a shock to you Robert, but if you took a look at the elections for, oh say the last 200 years, you would see that the type of government you seem to favor doesn't appeal to the American electorate at all. Presidnt Obama is the most leftwing liberal elected to the office and within a year, his approval ratings are fast approaching where Bush was 6-7 years into his disaster of a Presidency.

I still contend you're sputing rhetoric you don't mean, or if you do, you're a fraud. I've followed your comments for some time and frankly, I've yet to read one thing that could be described as a positive about this country; hell you were complaining about the jury system in another thread.

If things continue in their present course, and if those impediments to relocating were to be resolved, then perhaps....

Perhaps? If your conscience is so wracked by living in a nation whose electorate consistently elects war criminals to office, clearly wants to have nothing to do with a socialist health care system (which you seem to favor) why not 'definitely leave', why perhaps?

I'm guessing its because even though you due truly beleive we're ruled by war criminals and will probably never have the socialist system you want, life is still pretty darn good here and moving abroad is such a pain (been there done that) and none of that stuff really affects you personally does it. I mean other than offending your sensibilities, its really not enough for you to pack up and move. Like they try to do from Cuba or other places that really are run by war criminals.

"If your conscience is so wracked by living in a nation whose electorate consistently elects war criminals to office, clearly wants to have nothing to do with a socialist health care system (which you seem to favor) why not 'definitely leave', why perhaps?"

Whos says my conscience is wracked? My conscience is clear. Is your conscience wracked because there are gangs of criminals operating in your town? I'm angry, not suffering pangs of conscience.

"Presidnt Obama is the most leftwing liberal elected to the office and within a year, his approval ratings are fast approaching where Bush was 6-7 years into his disaster of a Presidency."

The first part of your statement is pure idiocy, and the second part of your statement is true...because the people turning against Obama are angry that he has turned his back on what they perceived would be the progressive agenda he would implement once in office...because they believe he has morphed into what he ran against...a typical Washington insider and double dealer who serves corporate interests and not the public...because he isn't left wing enough. (He's not left wing at all, actually, and never really was if you looked at him clearly, but too many who supported him--and who are now becoming unhappy with him--were taken in by his carefully calibrated image.)

"Honestly, Robert, all ideology aside, both yours and mine, how can you believe a thing this guy says anymore? Given subsequent Al Gore lineage since 2000, I see nothing to assure me that he would have followed through with that promise."

Scott M., do you not recognize irony when you see it? Gore is a tool, too.

Is your conscience wracked because there are gangs of criminals operating in your town?

No because I don't subscribe to the belief that our nation is run by gangs of criminals. Incompetents at times yes, but not criminals.

He's not left wing at all, actually, and never really was if you looked at him clearly, but too many who supported him--and who are now becoming unhappy with him--were taken in by his carefully calibrated image.)

Robert it would appear we are at an impasse since you consider a President who claims he was attracted to marxists and radicals is not left wing. Evidently we have completely different definitions as to what a left winger is.

If you truly believe that Obama's approval ratings are falling because he isn't leftwing enough, I fear your reasoning skills are beyond help.

"Robert it would appear we are at an impasse since you consider a President who claims he was attracted to marxists and radicals is not left wing. Evidently we have completely different definitions as to what a left winger is."

That Obama may have said he "was attracted" to marxists and radicals has no bearing on his present political orientation. He has, uh, "matured." More pertinent, as with any politician, one must observe what Obama does, not what he says, and he certainly does not govern as president as a "left winger," much less radically so. He may have identified as left wing when he was younger, (or he may not have...one can admire political figures for many reasons without necessarily adopting their political philosophies), but presently, as a politician, the most one can say is that he conveys in his rhetoric a vaguely "progressive" perspective, modeled on but only a shadow of the truly radical vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.

He's a standard issue Washington Democrat: a milquetoast liberal in his presentation, traditionally corporatist in his actions. (I'm even willing to believe he may still harbor some liberal or "lefty" ideas retained from his earlier days--or he may flatter himself that he does--but again, look at his actions and not his words.)

As to what I think a left wing president is, that's hard to encapsulate, especially as I am no doctrinaire leftist myself, but among the indicators would be a person who claimed office immediately advocating for universal health care, for complete removal of the insurance companies and the profit motive from the health delivery system. (Although I favor this, I don't mean to mount another argument in favor of it here. This is merely to present an example of the least I would expect from a truly "left wing" President.)

That he refused even to consider single payer or allow it to be discussed at his vaunted meetings with various representatives from the health care industry--most of them reps of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, lobbyists, etc.; that he started from a position of compromise, knowing that in the process of bringing a bill through Congress to presumable passage into law, it would become yet more compromised, more stripped of significant reforms; that he essentially gave the game away from the start, is not the strategy of a "left wing" President.

I would also, at the least, expect a left wing President to promote reforms that would benefit mortgage holders, American workers (and the jobless and poor), and that would strictly regulate Wall Street and the banks. Giving billions to the banksters, with essentially no conditions, is not the act of a "left wing" president. I would also expect a left wing President to investigate possible violations of the law by the powerful, even or especially by those who had preceded him in office. That we have initiated two wars of aggression and have commenced an open campaign of torture and kidnapping around the globe should certainly have compelled a truly left wing president to mount investigations of all involved for war crimes.

Let me add: I don't assert that a president must be "left wing" to be acceptable and in fact I don't expect to see a significantly left of center President elected anytime soon. Obama, middle of the road though he may be, could still effect positive reforms, if he wanted and tried to do so.

My point is that in a climate where a centrist president is decried as not only a "radical leftist" but the "most radically leftist" President we've ever elected, there is no hope of meaningful political debate, as the arguments are hopelessly distorted from the start, engaged not with things as they but with chimera.

My point is that in a climate where a centrist president is decried as not only a "radical leftist" but the "most radically leftist" President we've ever elected, there is no hope of meaningful political debate, as the arguments are hopelessly distorted from the start

Well that was my point as well. You clearly have a different definition of leftist than I do.

Also you seem to forget how our Republic functions. While Obama most certainly wants a socialist health care system, it is obvious the majority of Americans, as well as their representatives in Congress do not.

Obama is leftwing, his speeches and views confirm that. Fortunately our Founders created a system of check and balances to reign in the power of the Executive.

That we have initiated two wars of aggression and have commenced an open campaign of torture and kidnapping around the globe should certainly have compelled a truly left wing president to mount investigations of all involved for war crimes

Well I will disagree on the number, I don't consider invading Afghanistan which was harboring the very people who attacked us as a war of aggression. Evidently you do so we can just agree to disagree there. I also don't have much problem with kidnappning and roughing up terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to kill you, me or anyone they deem an infidel. Evidently you find that abhorrent so again, we'll agree on the impasse.

Again Robert, you seem to hold some very negative views about your country and I think you should ponder the fact that very few of your countrymen feel the same way otherwise we probably would have seen a Nader or Kucinich on the ticket. Alas, we appear to be no where close to becoming the ideal nation that you wish us to become. Most the pity.

Hmmm...successfully doing everything he can to block anything close to a "socialist" health care system from even being discussed seems an inscrutable way to show his "certain" desire for it. But then, as you say, you and I have different definitions of not only "leftist" but also "socialist."